Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system voice communication, and more particularly to a unified communications IP phone using an information handling system host.
Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems have become a central point of communications for end users. Improvements in processing capabilities and network bandwidth have made common place telephone-like communications through information handling systems. Typically, voice communications through information handling systems rely on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to communicate voice information between participants through the Internet or other IP based networks. Many enterprises have adopted internal telephone systems that use VoIP telephones to communicate through the enterprise local area network with communication to the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) supported by a gateway. VoIP telephones are essentially task-specific information handling systems that mimic conventional telephones. Commercial VoIP telephone systems are typically based upon the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), however, each manufacturer typically adds proprietary features over SIP that make mixing or switching of proprietary VoIP telephone systems difficult. A generic SIP phone can interface with proprietary systems built on the SIP standard, but without the feature set available to proprietary phones. Some examples of such commercial systems include systems sold by Cisco, Aastra, Fonality, Avaya and Nortel. As a result, many enterprises get locked into VoIP telephone systems due to the high cost of replacing all of an existing VoIP system to an alternate system.
One alternative to proprietary SIP-based phones is Unified Communications (UC) phones available from Microsoft, LG, Nortel, Polycom and Cisco, which are typically compatible with a specific UC package. UC phones run a more complex operating system, such as Windows CE, and have features that are a subset of UC features running on a desktop or notebook information handling system. The idea behind a UC application is to intermix voice content, chat text, video and application sharing. UC phones provide a variety of features, however, their interfaces and interoperability with an information handling system tend to be limited and non-intuitive. The additional processing power needed for an operating system and Unified Communications application to execute on the phone increases the expense of phone hardware. Essentially, the phone is a netbook that runs Microsoft Communicator or similar application. An alternative is to simply run Microsoft Communicator on an employee's desktop or portable information handling system, however, the information handling system has to be running to provide phone service.